A man from Tokyo finds his missing friend in a village plagued by drought. There is a legend about a pond called Demon’s Pond, and the missing friend rings a bell several times a day to prevent the village from being flooded with water. Is this true, or is the man crazy?
Demon Pond is based on an old stage play, something I did not know when I sat down to watch the movie. Since I am lazy and at the same time want to be surprised, I do not read anything about the movies I watch. I just watch the movies I am interested in, and then I see where it takes me.
The first 40 minutes were as expected, with a lot of slow scenes and a creepy atmosphere, especially when Yuri shows up. She is creepy and weird-looking, and then I found out that she was played by a man, which explained a lot. So Yuri is a creepy-looking man pretending to be a woman. But the actor is great, and that is the most important thing.
After fifty minutes, you can tell that this is based on a stage play. The creatures of the lake take over, and I hated it, to be honest. It is like watching a completely different movie, and the princess is again played by the same man playing the Yuri character. And this time, he turns into the ugliest princess ever!
But when the sequence with the ugliest princess is finished, we are back to the interesting story and the more dark and unsettling atmosphere when the village idiots lose their minds, and you just want the human trash to disappear and be washed away. The love story and the drama that happens at this point are engaging, and you will end up hating the village losers.
Demon Pond has a really interesting and cool story that could have been better if it had not been for the cheesy sequence with the princess and the stage play feeling you get with the lobster man and things like that. It took me out of the whole movie, but then it dragged me back in when this nonsense was over. The princess plays a vital part in the story, and I would not have had a problem if they could have toned down the silly costumes that took me back to when I was a kid and we had to perform a play at school in front of our parents. The shame will never disappear! I lost my coolness that day, and I was only an innocent 9-year-old kid.